Professor Otto Stockmeyer has taught at Cooley since 1977 and as a visiting professor at two other law schools in the ’80s and ’90s. He also taught in Cooley’s Australia-New Zealand Foreign Study Program in 2005 and 2013.

Beginning January 6, 2014, some lucky Cooley second- and third-year students will take their Hilary term classes “Down-under” in Australia and New Zealand as part of Cooley’s Foreign Study Program. And it will be summer.

Their elective courses will have an international flavor, taught by faculty members from two of the world’s top law schools: Monash University in Australia and New Zealand’s University of Waikato. Monash’s law school is ranked 13th best in the world; Waikato is in the world’s top 100.

Participants will also have the opportunity, if they wish, to take Equity & Remedies taught by Cooley’s own Professor Charles Palmer. All credits and grades will transfer back to Cooley.

Professor Terry Cavanaugh and I accompanied this year’s group of twenty students (17 from Cooley and 3 guest students from other American law schools). We can attest that they learned a lot that can’t be found in books. You can read blog posts from Cooley student Teddy Eisenhut and from guest student Luke Pears-Dickson. And student Michelle Zurcher wrote posts in 2012 about the wonderful people she met while Down-under, and gave us some practical tips for taking the long trip away from home.

Professor Cavanaugh will be accompanying our foreign study students again in 2014 as the onsite program administrator.

2 responses to “Cooley Going to the Land Down Under Again in 2014”

I found the down under study abroad program to be an amazing experience. Who wouldn’t love to escape the Michigan winter in exchange for summer on the other side of the world! Studying in New Zealand was great and the people and professors at The University of Waikato were terrific and very very friendly. We ended up having cookouts and get togethers on multiple occassions at their homes, it was very nice. The academic schedule was such that taking trips on the weekends to see what New Zealand had to offer was very reasonable. I think I ended up traveling somewhere every weekend we were there other than the last two, since we had weekend classes scheduled those weeks. Going to New Zealand and then to Australia was absolutely the best way to do things also. The housing situation in New Zealand was your basic college dorms. This gave everyone a chance to get to know one another and socialize like you did in undergrad. Once we got to Australia we were living in hotel rooms in downtown Melbourne. The hotel was great, but being spread out over several floors and having a roommate made it a little more clique-ish. That wasn’t an entirely bad thing, but it was good that everyone knew each other before then, otherwise going from Australia to New Zealand might have been a lot different. I would absolutely ecourage anyone who has any desire to see that part of the world to jump at the opportunity to do it now. You’ll never get another offer like this! Sure, we can all go on a vacation to Australia or New Zealand, but it’s expensive and the number of things you can do is almost overwhelming. Wouldn’t you rather have 3+ months to explore, meet new, fun people, and get a more international legal experience, all while getting credit here at home??? Seems like a no brainer to me! I’m happy to talk to anyone interested in the program and share my thoughts and experiences.